The present invention relates to a running guide apparatus for a vehicle capable of keeping a safety at passing through a narrow path, and of decreasing a burden of a driver when the vehicle is passing through the narrow path.
A vehicle such as an automobile conventionally has a sensor in which a touch switch is turned on when a corner pole or bar-shaped member touches an obstacle such as a wall, guardrail, pole and parked vehicle, as disclosed in an official gazette of Japanese Utility Model Laid-open No. 5-68742 (1993), in order to compensate a sense of a driver, thereby recognizing a gap between the vehicle and obstacles existing in right and left side of the vehicle.
Recently, a technology is developed for decreasing the burden of the driver when the vehicle passes through the narrow path in the manner that an ultrasonic sensor arranged on a side surface or four corners of the vehicle irradiates an ultrasonic wave, receives a reflected wave from the obstacle, and measures a distance of the gap, thereby informing the driver of the measured distance.
However, since the driver needs a lot of skill to operate the vehicle with the above-mentioned corner pole attached on an outside of the body of the vehicle as a sign, it is impossible to obtain an effect to decrease the burden of the driver. In a contact type such as a feeler sensor, the driver can not operate a steering wheel sufficiently after touching the obstacle because he can not recognize the position before touching the object.
Furthermore, a supersonic technology can not teach the driver a positional relationship of the obstacle because of a deterioration of a spatial resolving power, and has an object dependence in which a radiated ultrasonic does not return from clothes of walkers and slippery walls. Accordingly, it is quite difficult to correspond to various structures existing on a road.
In view of the above-mentioned condition, an object of the present invention is to provide to a running guide apparatus for a vehicle capable of keeping a safety at passing through a narrow path and decreasing a burden of a driver by informing the driver of a gap between the detected structure and own vehicle body in dependency upon a proper detection of various constructions existing in the advancing direction of the vehicle before the vehicle is passing through the narrow path.
The running guide apparatus according to the present invention comprises stereoscopic picture processing means for processing a pair of stereoscopic pictures of an object outside a vehicle imaged by a imaging system mounted on the vehicle so as to obtain a distance distribution of an entire picture in dependency upon a discrepancy amount positions corresponding to the pair of the stereoscopic pictures in accordance with a principle of a triangulation;
construction detection means for detecting a plurality of various constructions by using three dimensional position data calculated with each portion of the object corresponding to the distance distribution data from the stereoscopic picture processing means, gap distance calculation means for respectively calculating the nearest distance as right and left gap distances each between an extended line of right or left side of the vehicle and each of ends on the vehicle side of the plurality of various constructions detected by the construction detection means, and information means for informing the driver of data related to the right and left gap data calculated by the gap distance calculation means.
In the present invention, after the distance distribution data in the entire picture are obtained by the principle of the triangulation in dependency upon the discrepancy amount of the positions corresponding to the pair of the stereoscopic pictures which are stereoscopically imaged from the objects around the vehicle, the three-dimensional positions of respective portions corresponding to the distance distribution data, thereby detecting the construction by using the three-dimensional position data. The calculation means respectively calculates the nearest distance as the right and left gap distances between an extended line of right or left side of the vehicle and each of ends on the vehicle side of the plurality of various constructions which has been previously detected, in order to inform the driver of the right and left gap distance data.
As described above, the present invention obtains the distance distribution in the entire pictures in dependency on the discrepancy amount between the positions corresponding to the pair of the stereoscopic pictures imaging the objects around the vehicle, calculates the three-dimensional position of each portion of the object corresponding to the distance distribution data, and detects a plurality of the constructions by using the calculated three-dimensional position data. The apparatus of the present invention further calculates as the right and left gap distances of the nearest distance between the ends on the vehicle side of the detected plurality of the objects and the extended line of the sides of the vehicle, respectively, and informs the driver of the calculated right and left gap distance data. Accordingly, it is possible to properly inform the driver of the gap distance between own vehicle body and the various constructions existing in the advancing direction before the vehicle passes through the narrow path after precisely detecting, thereby obtaining extremely excellent effects such as a decrease of the burden of the driver and an insurance against the risk.